


What Childs Is This?

by executrix



Category: Continuum (TV), Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:09:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Felix Dawkins grand-jetes into a barre and meets Kiera Cameron, Felix attracts quite the wrong kind of attention. Liber8 doesn't get what they expect, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Childs Is This?

**Author's Note:**

> Implied AU about Kiera’s family background, and I “transferred” Detective Childs to Inspector Dillon’s precinct.
> 
> In the unlikely event that you are reading this and haven’t seen “Continuum,” the potentially puzzling out-of-left-field “appearance” of Alec in section 2 is Alec’s voice talking to Kiera over a communication system. If you are reading this and haven’t seen “Orphan Black,” the name-slippage between “Sarah” and “Beth” is because Sarah Manning is impersonating Detective Beth Childs.

1.  
Felix mused that the past, dear as its romantic lace-trimmed self could be, wasn’t always better. For example, after the Second World War, the gallant girls in the Royal Ballet actually had to *knit their own tights*, whereas Felix could buy tights in a luxurious variety of colors and finishes. Today, he wore a classic pair in matte navy-blue, topped by an artfully slashed t-shirt, sashed at the waist with a batik scarf that was mostly cobalt. The trouble was that the mostly-lemon scarf, accented with cobalt, he had wrapped around his head, Nureyev-style, was just a skosh too long and it whipped around and covered one of his eyes. And that, and not a hangover, and not a rather too loving glance in the mirror, was the explanation he gave as to why, after a few warm-up pirouettes, he grand-jete’d into the barre. 

The weird new girl, the one with the bronze-y unitard and the thousand-mile stare, caught him before he got hurt. He had a disturbing feeling that she could have lifted him over head with one hand. 

After class, Felix went into the changing room and lounged provocatively for a while, but nobody of either professional or personal interest was around, so he shimmied into his coat-of-paint jeans, slung on a boat-necked, long-sleeved tissue tee (jade) and topped it with a short-sleeved rust v-neck. He adjusted his graffitied Doc Martens, refreshed his hair gel, and exited. 

The weird girl came out of the girls’ dressing room. It would have been too, too romcom for words to collide with her again, so he studiedly didn’t. 

“Want a coffee?” he said.

“Sure,” Kiera said, because she didn’t really know anyone from this timeline, except for cops. “How about the Wagon Wheel Café? My partner likes the cinnamon rolls.” If Kiera had been a cute boy, then Felix would have been crushed by a reference to a partner, but she wasn’t so it just went in one ear and out the one with the diamond stud. 

When Kiera walked in, the waiter snapped a cameraphone picture of Kiera’s table, and went through the back door purportedly for a smoke break.

“Yeah, that’s Cameron,” Lucas Ingram said, when he’d sent the picture. “I don’t know who the guy with her is, though.”

“Look, I’m not gonna kill a cop, OK?” the waiter said. “I hate corporations, sure, but…”

“Temperature mod!” Lucas said, then corrected himself. “Chill! No one’s asking you to kill anybody. But those nanochips I gave you? You carry them, right?”

“Yeah.” 

“OK, that guy with Cameron, can you see his phone? Maybe in his coat pocket? If you’re lucky, he hung up his coat on the rack and left the phone there.”

“I’m never that lucky,” said this particular member of Liber8’s low-level asset network. “But, are you kidding? These richies are never more than two centimeters away from their phones, so they can read their e-mails and texts all the time. Like, the same asshole who you don’t listen to when you’re talking to them, suddenly they’re fascinating when they tweet you.” 

“Great! So, distract his attention, then peel off the backing and stick the nanner on his phone.” 

Kiera stood up and waved. “Carlos! Over here!” 

Felix’ jaw dropped. Dark, handsome, and divinely tall. Carlos unzipped his leather jacket. Felix feasted his eyes. He reached into his pocket just as the waiter began to set down a cappuccino that seemed about to splash. Felix grimaced, and moved his phone out of the way of the cup—and closer to the waiter who, shielded by the cup, stuck on the tracker. 

“Here!” Felix said, handing over a business card. “You’re so, so hot that the first one’s on the house.”

Carlos, amused, took out one of his own business cards. “Considering that I’m a cop, I’ll just assume that *all* of your, ah, Afternoon Delights are on the house.” 

Felix was so embarrassed (and so unwilling to get busted again) that he gathered up his scattered possessions, blew a kiss to Kiera, and left (Carlos sat down in the still-warm seat). He stayed away from ballet class for a week and a half, by which time he had forgotten what he was embarrassed about and assumed Kiera would have done the same. But, thanks to shift change, Kiera stopped taking that class anyway.

2\.   
“Do we have any actual, professional, non-insane law enforcement personnel here?” Inspector Dillon asked.

Kiera put her hands on her hips and coughed. 

“Awright. Any actual *Canadian* law enforcement personnel here?” Then Dillon decided to stop complaining: he might as well kill two pains in one ass by putting them together. 

“Childs, until we—until YOU--get this civilian review thing sorted out, you’re with Cameron. Try not to puke on her. Cameron, give me back Fonnegra, take Childs and go hunt some terrorists.”

Once she was sure that Dillon couldn’t see her, Sarah gave a hideous leer and rolled her eyes. Kiera tried not to break up laughing. 

They got a pool car, and parked near a warehouse that was suspected of being a Liber8 meeting location. Every once in a while someone would go in or come out, but since none of them was carrying a plum-pudding-like bomb with a lit fuse, all they did was snap photographs and try to match them to whatever security database they could find. 

After two hours, Sarah took the first break to stretch her legs, find a toilet, and bring back some coffee, which would keep the cycle going but at least would help keep them awake. “Sorry, just Timmy’s,” she said. “I didn’t want to go too far away just to get a better cuppa. And some dead-fly biscuits.”

Kiera boggled, but realized that the name referred to something like raisins studded into the cookies. “Thanks,” she said. “The coffee will keep me going,” said Kiera who, strictly speaking, didn’t have to sleep anyway. “If you want to curl up in the back and sleep for a little while.” 

“’Sokay. I can stay awake ‘till the end of the shift. And, remember, we’re off at four, Dillon said no overtime.” 

“So, what do you think of Inspector Dillon, anyway?” Kiera asked.

Sarah pretended to look around. “Why? Is the car bugged?”

Since it pretty much was, although not the way Sarah implied, Alec giggled. 

“Of course not!” Kiera said. “Cross real hard and hope to die!” 

“Well, he’s all right.”

“How about the way he runs things? You know, the different routines for doing things, and all those forms we have to fill out?” 

“Pretty normal, I guess,” Sarah said. “So, how do we compare to what you’re used to?”

“You’re regular police, and when I’m home I’m in counter-terrorism,” Kiera said. “So, it’s like apples and fuyu persimmons. And, of course, a lot of what we do is very secretive.”

Sarah had been hoping to ask Kiera some questions about police procedure (well, a list of them, actually) but there would be no point trying to pick her brains if all she knew about was the crazy Yank stuff that Sarah could brush up on by watching TV. 

“I wonder if she knows any more than you do?” Alec said. “In fact, are you sure she’s who she says she is?” He waited for her answer, then realized that she wasn’t in any position to talk to him.  
“So, are you married?” Kiera asked Sarah.

“God, no, it’s a mug’s game. You?”

“I’m….separated,” Kiera said.

“Sorry. That’s tough. Kids?”

“A son,” Kiera said miserably. “He’s with his dad. I miss him so much.”

“That’s the Job for you,” Sarah said, with knowledge born of dozens of police procedural paperbacks. “Tough to be a woman. Tough to keep a marriage together. They never think you’re tough enough at the station, or feminine enough at home.” Sarah reached into her, or rather Beth’s, wallet and pulled out a photo of Kira. “This is my little girl.”

“Oh, she’s precious! How old?”

“Ten.”

“You look much too young for that! My son is seven.” 

Sarah waved a languid hand. “Same thing back about how young you are.”

“It’ll all fall down into a heap one day and I’ll look a hundred and ten, my grandma Ernestine always used to say…”

Sarah sniggered. “Come on, nobody is named Ernestine.” 

“Well, she *was.* Maybe that’s what made her so snippy to everybody. Especially little kids.” 

3\.   
Carlos looked over the dispatcher’s shoulder at the book she was reading. “Renesmee?” he said. “What the hell kind of name is that?”

“Don’t be culturally insensitive,” Betty said. “It’s not that weird. In the southern part of the United States, sometimes families make a portmanteau out of the names of girl’s grandmothers.” 

“How do you know this stuff?” Carlos asked.

“I’m very smart. And, of course, much more plugged into popular culture than your weirdo partner.”

4\.   
“Felix, luv, can you possibly go to school and pick up Kira?” Mrs. S. said. “You know I’m a martyr to my teeth, and I can just feel that one of those wretched silver fillings is breaking up and pushing its way through my gum. I reek of oil of cloves. I got through to the dentist’s surgery, but the only time he can fit me in is today at two, and he’ll never be finished by three. Even if he was, I’ll be shattered.”

“Of course, Mrs. S., you know I never have a tri…business appointment round that time, just in case Kira needs me.” 

“I’m sorry, pet, I know it’s three buses…”

“Don’t worry, I have a friend I can get to drive me,” Felix said. He ended the call, and immediately dialed Alison’s number. “Jimi?” he said. “It’s me. Felix. Darling, I’m going to do you a favor.”

“Why am I suspicious?” Alison said. “And what kind of favor?”

“I’ll do your makeup for you, make you look splendidly lovely.”

“Listen, buster, I’ll have you know that I was one of Mary Kay Canada’s best reps, and I would have had a pink Cadillac if I hadn’t had to go full-time on adoption stuff.”

“All right then, I’ll teach you how to make delicious and economical absinthe out of common materials readily available in the average Canadian home.” 

Alison sighed. “Just spit it out, Feels. What is it you really want?”

“A lift,” he said. “No, not the chemical kind. I have to pick up Kira from school, and I’m too skint for a taxi, and, well, you’ve got that hydrocarbon-spewing monster and…”

“Just this once,” Alison said. 

“I know! Kira can have a playdate with your kids! And if they have three friends, I can teach them all the choreography for the Cell Block Tango!”

“Of course they have three friends,” Alison said indignantly. “My kids are very popular!”

5\.   
Lucas put down the bag of Pirate Booty, rubbed his hands on his jeans to clean off the salt, and zeroed in on the surveillance monitor. Surveillance, as he was learning the hard way, is really boring, but at last it seemed that something was going to happen. 

The guy—the one who had the chip stuck to his phone—said something about getting a lift, because he had to pick up Kiera. 

The person on the other end of the call was a woman (Lucas launched a trace on her, in a split screen with the GPS feed from Felix’s phone). She said, “OK. Where are you?”

“Home,” he said. “You know, the loft.”

“And where are we going to?”

Felix gave her the address. Lucas closed the file on his computer and yelled for Valentine to come over so they could make a plan to capture the Protector.

6.  
The little girl Helena thought. The tiny little girl. The tiny angel. I will give her wings that she do not have to cut for herself. Tiny abominable angel. Bad copy. If we could make more, it would be me. So she does not belong on earth and should not be here. It will be good when order is restored. She tumbled down the street in sloppy pirouettes, trusting to instinct rather than any more conventional form of navigation. 

Kira saw her, recognizing her from her appearances, framed and silhouetted by French doors, waved at her. She’s so pretty, Kira thought. She always looks up at the sky. Not like grownups who spend the whole day frowning down at their feet. 

7.  
“There’s never anyplace to park,” Alison grumbled. 

“Well, not for a brontosaurean land yacht like this,” Felix said. After circling for a while, they parked a couple of blocks from Kira’s school and walked over to meet her.

8.  
“Fuck,” Sonya Valentine said quietly. The homeless woman with the electric platinum frizz came out of nowhere, and practically ran under the wheels of the van. No, to be fair, she ambled under the wheels of the van. So at least she didn’t get hit very hard.

Valentine, torn between wanting to get out and examine her, and carrying out the mission, reminded herself to stay focused. 

She scanned the corners for a glimpse of Cameron, but there was no one on the street but a little girl. Across the street, she heard a shout of “Kiera!” and the little girl yelled “Uncle Felix!” and started to cross the street. 

In the rear-view mirror, Valentine could see Lucas open the door, grab the girl, put her under his arm, and hustle her toward the van. “Stop it!” Valentine yelled, but he didn’t hear her, or was so fixated on his task that he didn’t listen. He threw the girl into the van, got in behind her, closed the door, and banged on the back seat. “Go, go, go!” he yelled.

Millions of possibilities, most of them awful, scrolled through Sonya’s mind. The least-worst was to be someplace that wasn’t there, so she put her foot down and drove. 

9.  
Alison took a proper, well-braced shooting stance, opened her knapsack, yelled, “Yee-haw!”, pulled out a gun, and started shooting at the retreating van. Felix, his phone already to his mouth, stared at her, appalled. 

Four of the bullets went wild, but the fifth flattened a rear tire. The sixth also plunked into the curb. 

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

“Stopping them. Or, well, at least slowing them down.”

“Alison, Kira is in that van! If you’d hit the gas tank, or if the van had smashed into something, you might have killed her horribly!”

“Picky, picky, Mr. Pessimist! I could have rescued her!” 

Felix, quickly and breathlessly, completed the call, shut off the phone, and jammed it into the front pocket of his jeans. 

Alison pondered whether to re-load, but the van was already lumbering away. She nudged the knapsack down from her shoulder, threw the gun from one hand to the other, and threw it back into the knapsack. 

They ran to Alison’s soccer-mom SUV. Sonya, on three wheels, had to drive slowly enough that Alison was able to catch up. When Sonya parked, Alison parked half a block back, on the other side of the street. 

Felix started to call the police again, to report the location, when Alison swatted at his phone and climbed out of the SUV. “There’s no time for that!” she said. “And, since when were the cops your best friends anyway? C’mon!” she said, pressing back into a doorway and pulling Felix along with her. 

Felix looked at her, appalled, his mouth hanging open. Alison was transfigured, as though standing under the Christmas tree hoping to open a box full of “shoot a terrorist.” 

10.  
Lucas picked up Kira under the armpits and carried her up the stairs, arriving just as Sonya unlocked the door to the loft. Lucas turned on the TV set, loud, and parked Kira in front of it. Sonya gave her a plate of vegan peanut butter cookies and a big glass of soymilk. 

Then she and Lucas huddled in the far corner, conferring with quiet anger. “What a fuck-up,” Sonya said. “I’m just glad Kagame isn’t here to see this.” 

“Well, what are we going to do? I know what Travis and Jasmine would do. No witnesses.” 

“We’re not going to…” Sonya began, and ground to a halt. “Anyway, I’m sure she wouldn’t be able to tell the cops much they can use. And we’re planning on moving to the next safe house anyway.”

“Lucky for her we’re the kinder, gentler side of terrorism. But, what? We’re not going to adopt her and change her name, keep her for fourteen years, or whatever.” 

Sonya shrugged. “We’ll let her go. Obviously she’s not the Protector.”

“I’m beginning to wonder about that,” Lucas said. “I mean, I never used to believe…I mean, I’m never going to…well, you see where I’m going with this…in time travel. But now I have to. And who knows what kind of timey-wimey crap they have around here?”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.” Anyway, Sonya thought, we already tried killing families, and look where *that* got us. “You go and change the tire. Put on one of those phony plates, too, in case somebody reported the one that’s on the van already. Then we’ll ask her where she lives, drive around in circles ‘till she’s confused, and drop her off six, seven blocks away from there, let her walk home.” 

“Is that smart?” Lucas asked. “There are some genuinely bad people out there. Anything could happen when she’s just wandering around. Why not drop her off at the police station? Not the nearest one, obviously.”

“A minute ago you almost suggested murdering her. Now you’re worried about, what? Child molesters? Killer clowns? Forget the copshop. You know how wide the angle is on their security vids,” Sonya said, driving a hard bargain. “Hospital, though. We can take her to the hospital—not all the way in, just close to the Emergency Department entrance. Tell her to go into the ED, and tell a grownup that she’s lost and she needs the police to take her home.” 

It didn’t feel right to Lucas, but he didn’t have a better idea either, so he stuck his head under the kitchen sink, grabbed the tool kit and some spare license plates, and went downstairs.

11.  
Felix and Alison lurked for a few minutes. When Lucas came out, Felix held Alison back from tackling him. “We’re here for Kira,” he whispered to her. 

They ran to the building Lucas had just left, and pounded on the intercom buttons until someone buzzed them in. They could hear a TV blaring on the second floor, so they ran up the steps, just in time to throw themselves through the door before Valentine could bolt it.

Alison gave a gasp of relief, seeing Kira (or, anyway, the back of Kira’s head as she watched the huge flatscreen) alive and apparently unhurt and undistressed.

“Just let us take the little girl home, and we’ll forget about the rest,” Felix said. “We won’t…we won’t even arrest you. But the deal doesn’t hold if anything happens to her.”

“Who the hell are you? The cops? Got some ID?”

“Let’s keep this off the record. Under the wire. Good cop and bad cop went home for the day,” said Felix, who liked American TV. “We’re…a different kind of cop.”

“No shit,” Sonya said. “The kohl eyeliner tipped me off.” 

“Are we going to have a problem? Do you feel lucky?” Alison said, rummaging around in her backpack and pulling out her gun.

Sonya reached under the kitchen island and ripped loose the Velcro securing the sawed-off shotgun.

Felix stared at them, appalled, not least because he remembered that Alison had emptied the clip into the van and hadn’t reloaded.

“All right, girls…ladies…armed persons… let’s just put those away, OK? Now we’ve established whose gun is bigger.” Alison glared at him, but stuck the gun into the waistband of her mom jeans. A heartbeat later, Sonya lowered the sawed-off. “Fuck if I even want the kid,” Sonya whispered. “But I can’t just hand her over to anyone, you know?”

“You just took her from anyone,” Alison said. “In fact, you took her from us. We were picking her up from school.”

“Kiera, honey,” Sonya said, raising her voice. “Do you know these people?”

“Sure!” Kira said, turning around from the much more interesting broadcast fare. “That’s my Uncle Felix and my Auntie Alison! She’s not my real auntie, but I’m not old enough to just call her Alison. Or, she’s too old.” 

Kira brought over the plate—just one cookie had a bite—and the untouched glass. “These cookies taste like poo!” she said. 

“Kira!” Alison said. “That’s not polite!”

“Yeah,” Felix said. “We *always* have to be nice to…” and trailed off before saying “kidnappers and terrorists,” because he wanted to keep Kira un-hysterical as long as possible. A glorious day, or at least a glorious heap under which this entire mess could be buried without anyone taking it out on Felix, seemed to be dawning. “I’m not surprised, though, they *look* like poo.”

“We have to be nice to everybody!” Alison said, with a terrifying grin. Since she seemed to be having her Best Day Ever (or, he surmised her first orgasm), Felix reminded herself to remind her about it the next time he needed a favor.

12.  
“Oh, hey, Kiera,” Carlos said. “Hi, Detective Childs. Got a really weird one. There was an emergency call, about a kidnapped girl and a hit-and-run. Turns out that, yeah, a woman—probably homeless, de-institutionalized mental patient, you know—long, white hair, muttering to herself--did get hit. She’s pretty out of it, so the EMTs couldn’t get much sense out of her. Threw her into the ambulance, took her to the ED, treated and released. So naturally I was worried about the girl. Caller—didn’t leave his name, I’m sure you’re shocked.” (Carlos knew that he’d heard that voice somewhere, but no matter how he racked his brains, he couldn’t remember where) “Said that a little girl was forced into a van. Even had a partial plate. So, while I was waiting for Betty to run the plate, I went to the scene, played Rashomon with the usual sullen and confused witnesses, and found out that some version of the stuff he called in really happened. But before I could even check for security cam footage, there was another call from the same guy, said that it was all a mistake, the kid got home safe. And I checked, there weren’t any incident reports that were even a partial match with all that wackiness, and none of the hospitals or morgues got a kid who could be collateral damage from it.”

Kiera shook her head. “What a nightmare.” She touched Sarah’s shoulder gently. “You’re a mom, aren’t you, Beth?” Sarah nodded. “I remember.”

“’Hostages to fortune,’” Sarah said. She checked her phone. “And I’ll be seeing her tonight!”

“Let’s not mention this to Dillon,” Kiera said. “You know that he’d just say that if we have to go around making up crimes, he’s got plenty of files of actual crimes to give us.” 

13.  
“You know, sweetheart, both your mum and Mrs. S. have been under a lot of stress lately,” Felix said. 

Kira nodded. “Under a lot of stress” was grownupese for “has a lot of smelly sour brown drinks and then yells a lot the next morning.”

“So I think we should do them a favor and not tell them about the…” (he started to say “scary” things but Kira seemed to be taking it all in stride so he corrected it to “unusual things that happened today. Because…they would just get stressier. So just be charming. What did I tell you about being charming?”

“’Encourage people to talk about themselves.’”

“Right! I hope when you grow up you needn’t to do that professionally. Unless you want to, of course.” 

Kira nodded again. Grownups always talked about themselves anyway, and if they shut up for a minute you could always pretend you sucked your thumb so they’d try to get you to stop doing that, and then it would be time for them to talk about themselves again.

Mrs. S. opened the door. “Hullo, Anne of Cloves. Was it very horrible?” Felix asked. 

Mrs. S. put her arms around the two of them and gave them kisses at different levels. “Shocking,” she said. “Go on up to your room and play ‘til your mam gets here,” she told Kira. 

Felix drank gin-and-blackcurrant, let his eyes nearly brim with tears, and nodded at appropriate intervals during the blow-by-blow account. Then the doorbell rang. “I’ll get it,” Felix said. He looked Sarah up and down, and whispered, “Stop Bething!” and gave her a hug. 

“Come on down, darlin’!” Mrs. S. yelled. Kira ran down the stairs and into her mother’s arms.

“Did you have a good day, Monkey?” Sarah asked.

“We had lots of good fun that was funny,” Kira said.


End file.
